Learning from Precarity
Yale School of Architecture
Speculative Project
What About Learning? Studio, Deborah Saunt, 2020
Given the speculative and theoretical framework that ultimately disillusions recent architecture school graduates, how can students of architecture become better prepared to design for the unknown while simultaneously engaging the challenges of their time? The architecture student should be taught to exist and design in various time zones—that is, the past, the present, the future—in order to best frame their role in ever-changing societies. Relying on memory, observation, and data as tools for learning, this alternate model provides architects-to-be with hands-on experience from an interdisciplinary perspective. Four key actors — government, community, designers, and researchers — will help to realize intervention-based attachments to existing infrastructure and introduce new typologies that will be integral to the survival of our cities. Situating itself in a near future of drastic sea-level rise and seasonal coastal flooding, the project envisions a possible reality where Miami becomes a host to climate adaptation experimentation and agile learning in precarity.
